Nature Notes

Made a whistle-stop 24-hour visit to Denis Thursday/Friday this week to take some foreign journalists around the island, this coupled with extended heavy rain during my stay made time for observations very limited. I was however able to make a few notes:

• A few blue-cheeked bee eaters remain on the island and I noted two hawking over the runway on Friday morning, I did not see or hear tell of any birds of prey however and it may be that they have now all moved on.
• The island has a new batch of moorhen young with new chicks seen with adults at various locations.
• Strong winds in late November appear to have resulted in extensive fatalities amongst Fairy tern chicks with a lot of dead birds evident around the island in recent weeks. This is further underlined by a large number of fairy terns now on eggs – the small tree where Fred was raised currently has four adults incubating - suggesting that breeding cycles of pairs may have been synchronised somewhat by these losses.
• The Hawksbill turtle nesting season continues apace with the hotel manager telling me that 3 females nested around the hotel restaurant over the festive season.
  The Southeast monsoon was blowing strongly whilst I was on the island and aside from bringing the rain it has resulted in considerable beach movement and I will check for erosion issues when I next visit.
• All is well with the magpie robin population and now that the flycatchers have started to establish stable territories they too are beginning to form part of the island’s ecotourism product with several guests reporting having seen them on their wanders around the island.

We have a busy period ahead with the hope of finding flycatcher breeding keeping Anselm occupied, Catherina as usual immersed in her magpie robins and preparations for the second season of the sooty tern project imminent. GIF will also soon be starting a new project in the central archipelago and so I will be setting up a new blog to cover our activities elsewhere and will put in a link to it, on this site, in due course!

So keep checking back for updates!